• The process of paring 120 books down to a shortlist of six is, at first, fairly easy. You love the main character, and dislike the ending. It goes. The story is fantastic, the writing less so. It goes. But the more you read, the more difficult it becomes, until an exacting process becomes wrenching. In some years, clear themes have emerged among the books submitted for the Orange prize; this year, the books spanned everything from Aztec emperors to alienated undertakers, and what was most exciting was the sweep, the scope, the ambition on show. It was a year of authors taking on serious, unusual subjects about which they were clearly passionate.

Inevitably, some personal favourites didn't make the shortlist. I loved Bernardine Evaristo's novel Blonde Roots, which inverts the history of slavery - with white Europeans as the slaves - and is incredibly inventive and funny. Then there was Miriam Toews's The Flying Troutmans, the perfectly pitched, witty story of a family struggling with mental illness. And Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, a fictionalised account of Laura Bush's life, which floated in my psyche for weeks.

Then there were six. Three US authors: Marilynne Robinson with Home, a follow-up to the Pulitzer prize-winning Gilead; Ellen Feldman with Scottsboro, an account of a notorious 20th-century rape trial; and Samantha Hunt with The Invention of Everything Else, a fictionalised life of the inventor Nikola Tesla. There is a first novel by a British author - Samantha Hunt's The Wilderness, the story of the slow disintegration of a man with Alzheimer's; Burnt Shadows, a sweeping family story that moves from Nagasaki, to Karachi, to New York, by Kamila Shamsie (pictured); and Molly Fox's Birthday, by Deirdre Madden, the reflective tale of three friends. I can't show my hand when it comes to these books - it's all still to play for. Kira Cochrane

• This year's Orwell book prize was presented on Wednesday to Andrew Brown, the editor of the Belief section of the Guardian's Comment is Free site, for Fishing in Utopia (Granta). George Orwell was represented by his son, Richard Blair, and by his tie, which was ritually worn by his biographer, DJ Taylor. Ferdinand Mount, who judged the £3,000 award with Ian Jack, enthused about "entrancing" passages in a book he described as the story of the author "falling in love with everything Swedish - his first wife, fishing and socialism". Jeremy Paxman, reviewing it in these pages, praised it as "enticingly written".

However, Mount and Jack, former editors of the TLS and Granta respectively, hedged their bets by giving a special lifetime achievement award to the historian Tony Judt, whose shortlisted Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (Heinemann) Mount described as "an example of an endangered literary species, the collection of historical essays". The pair's reluctance to see anyone lose was also evident when Mount extolled the virtues of all the final six (the remaining authors were Owen Matthews, Hsiao-Hung Pai, Ahmed Rashid and Mark Thompson), and also of several who got no further than the longlist - Patrick Cockburn (who had the compensation of winning the Orwell award for journalism), Mark Mazower and Philippe Sands. While not everyone could win prizes, the judges at least ensured that nearly everyone received praise.John Dugdale

• Seven very boy-friendly books are in the running for the Carnegie medal, the children's book award which comes with no prize money but much prestige. "It's the kids' Booker," said Keith Gray, shortlisted for Ostrich Boys, the story of a group of boys who decide to take their friend's ashes to Scotland.

The line-up, which is selected by librarians from around the UK, shows a move away from the supernatural elements of recent bestsellers. The children in these titles are ordinary - they may have dangerously exciting adventures, but there are no wands, vampires or witches involved. Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks throws five friends into the worst night of their lives at a funfair, and the late Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child sees an Irish boy discover the body of a dead child. Previous winner Frank Cottrell Boyce's Cosmic features an unusually tall 13-year-old; and while last year's Guardian children's fiction prizewinner, Patrick Ness, set his shortlisted The Knife of Never Letting Go in a world where thoughts can be heard, he makes his protagonist a normal adolescent boy. Also in the running are Eoin Colfer's Airman, about a boy born in a hot-air balloon, and Kate Thompson's Creature of the Night, in which a troubled teenager moves to the Irish countryside.

With a recent survey finding that 42% of boys between 11 and 16 never read for fun, "it's good to be on a list that seems to have boys in mind," Gray said. "A lot of books aimed at boys are about being a spy, fighting monsters, being a vampire - it's great to have some that are about what it feels like to just be a boy."Alison Flood

• Gail Rebuck, chairman and chief executive of Random House, was standing by the door, grinning, as London book fair guests arrived to learn how James Patterson planned to solve the problem of boys' reluctance to read. In amiable form, except when digressing to slam the supposed popularity of comics as media myth, Patterson told how he and his wife cured their 11-year-old son's aversion to books: "We told him to read for 10 or 20 minutes every day for all of one summer, and now he's a maniac reader." Importantly, though, the books chosen must be "cool", tailored to boys' tastes. He also favoured more series aimed at boys on the lines of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider stories, and male role models (particularly sportsmen) publicly declaring "I'm a reader".

Later the same day, Random House confirmed that Dan Brown had delivered his first novel since The Da Vinci Code in 2003, which will be published in September. With no Harry Potter to challenge it, The Lost Symbol is almost certain to be the year's top-selling title and is expected to continue to sell spectacularly well for several years in paperback. A new Dan Brown at last, a reissue of his Angels and Demons tied to the movie, and another 10 or so new novels this year from the Patterson factory - no wonder Rebuck was looking so pleased.JD

• Alongside the brash, commercial side of the fair epitomised by Patterson was a kind of parallel literary festival showcasing an unusually large turn-out of brainy authors - the 45-strong Indian squad including Amartya Sen, Amit Chaudhuri and Vikram Seth, a smaller but impressive group of Russians, and one-off mavericks such as Umberto Eco and Boris Johnson.

One author bridged this gap, boasting sales on the Dan Brown scale yet achieving them with a book about ancient philosophy. Yu Dan is a university professor in Beijing who is described by her UK publisher as "the most famous woman in China": her Confucius from the Heart: Ancient Wisdom for Today's World (translated by Esther Tyldesley), originally a series of lectures on TV, has sold a startling 10m copies, with another 5m pirated versions thought to be in circulation. Superficially similar to recent British books applying Greek and Roman thought to the modern world such as Charlotte Higgins's Latin Love Lessons, it differs in that Yu mixes stories of her own with Confucius's teachings in offering a recipe for health and happiness in a bewildering, ever-changing, increasingly individualistic China.

Her follow-up, on another ancient thinker called Zhuangzi, proved she was more than a one-hit-wonder. One signing session lasted almost 10 hours. Medical staff were in attendance in case they were needed, according to Tyldesley, and one helper was reportedly tasked with mopping her brow as she had no time to do so herself. What Confucius would have made of such frenetic salesmanship is unclear.JD